Hurricane Katrina: 10 Years Later

It’s been 10 years since Hurricane Katrina—a category 3 storm with 127 mph winds—made landfall between Grand Isle, La. and the mouth of the Mississippi River at 6 a.m., Aug. 29.

Many across the country first heard of the storm from Fox News anchor Shepard Smith, the Mississippi native who became the voice and conscience of the disaster. As the levee walls protecting New Orleans failed and flooded the city, it was Smith who made sure viewers were aware that this wasn’t just any storm: Katrina caused more than $108 billion in damage and displaced more than one million people in the Gulf region.

Here Smith shares his experience in his own words:

I remember a body floating down the street. I remember the sickening, cloying scent of the corpses, rotting in the sun, no one to take them away. I remember the soft cries of suffering children, and the plaintive pleas of elderly men and women, who had gone days without food or medicine.

But most of all, I remember the frustration.

There was no help. There were promises and reassurances. But there was no help.

And the suffering was unimaginable.

We first pulled into New Orleans just hours before the hurricane hit. I’d covered dozens of major storms by then, including Hugo in ‘89, and Andrew in ‘92. I had some of the company’s best producers, technicians and photographers with me on this trip, and we all knew the drill. First, we had to find a home base, a safe location where we could keep broadcasting even if the power were to go out. We headed to the Royal Sonesta hotel and got a room on the second floor that came with a balcony where we could set up our camera. We chose the French Quarter because a lot of people have either visited it or seen it on TV. It was familiar, a spot they know.

We did a few live shots there, and then stayed up watching the weather reports. We thought the storm was headed straight for us, and we planned how we’d escape the hotel if it hit. But later that night, we watched the storm jog to the east, as they always seemed to do in New Orleans.

And the next morning, I remember saying the city had dodged a bullet. We didn’t know then, that the wall of water Katrina had created was headed our way. We didn’t know then that the city would drown.

So we packed our gear and started heading east, to South Mississippi: Waveland, Pass Christian, Gulfport, Biloxi—those communities had just been obliterated, or forever changed. Mississippi is my home and I wanted to be there to report on the damage and the recovery. We were driving, getting updates from local radio stations, when we heard a parish president on New Orleans station WWL radio, the Big 870, talking about witnessing a breach in a levee. We turned around immediately. We knew what that meant.

There was no traffic headed back to New Orleans. Nobody was going in that direction.

I called our headquarters in New York and talked with our boss about what was about to happen. He organized network reinforcements and we got to a spot along I-10, just west of the city, and jumped on the air quick.

In the days that followed, I saw sights I never could have imagined. Many of them are forever scorched into my consciousness. People who had loaded into small boats with their families and whatever they could carry, paddling through the streets of their ruined communities. Mothers who were trying to comfort their babies, without milk or clean diapers. We spent most of our time on overpasses and bridges, and the flooding stretched as far as you could see, in every direction you looked. But as bad as it was, we of course knew that help was on the way. We knew the city and state would send help. We knew from experience that whenever a disaster of extraordinary magnitude hits, our nation responds.

This time, it did not. This time, we fell short. This time, there was no cavalry racing to the rescue. There was only frustration. And the cries of the dying. And the screams of those who could do little but watch their loved ones slip away. We saw corpses bloated in the 90-degree heat. It was so hot, I remember one body just exploded, tattering its clothes.

This wasn’t in a war zone somewhere. This was an American city. This was a city I loved.

And this was unimaginable.

I have never in my life felt so helpless and so frustrated, as I did those days on a bridge in New Orleans. I will never, ever forget what that was like. I thought that city was dead. Gone for good.

But then, in the days and weeks and months after there were so many thousands of stories. People knocking on doors, helping their neighbors. I think we learned that the system can’t do it for us; we have to help each other. And time and time again we do. You think all hope is lost and it’s not.

For example, Houston opened up their Astrodome and city after city did all they could do. Governments—from local to federal—could have done a lot better in the beginning. But afterward, in the everybody-needs-help time period it seemed like every city in America was taking in people from our region. It wasn’t a perfect experience for those who had to evacuate. But everyone was trying. And maybe from the trying we have better plans together now. So next time – and there will be a next time—it will be better. I hope and pray that they’re right.

Looking back, we’ve learned that we can’t be fully ready for these storms. But you can get out of the way. In areas with a large population of people who rely on public transportation, then we have to send the buses.

Over the last 10 years, I’ve returned many times; just last year I went back to New Orleans. It’s still not exactly the same city it once was. The character, the flavor, is just slightly different. It’s evolved, somehow. But importantly, it still stands—a decade after Katrina did her damndest to drown it.

AMG/Parade Digital

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